As of now, the gifting industry as it relates to experience-based merchants (hospitality, ticketing, golf, skiing, any place that sells a service that needs to be experienced in-person to be consumed) is still reliant upon physical gift cards and antiquated delivery methods. To give the gift of a meal or other experience, the giver visits the merchant, purchases a physical gift card for a standardized dollar amount, and physically hands or sends the gift card to the gift recipient. The giver can also have the merchant mail the gift certificate to the gift recipient. Either way the process takes effort and time to coordinate the delivery method, and there are extra costs: time to get to the merchant, order online, postage costs, and so forth.
Gift cards can be impersonal. A gift means a lot more when it is clear that the gift giver put time and thought into making the gift personal, and went the extra mile to personalize the gift to the recipient's tastes. Giving a gift card of stored value also bears with it a minimum monetary threshold to be deemed acceptable as a gift, which, to most people is around $20 or more. Yet, when you are at a friend or acquaintance's birthday, it is perfectly acceptable to buy them a $7 beer as a nice way of saying happy birthday. In addition, gift card recipients often misplace physical gift cards or lose them.
Some online systems have attempted to solve these problems, but generally fall into the category of making one or more parts of the gift card process digital. For example, gift givers can go to a store's website to purchase a gift card, can send the gift card by email, and so forth. Gift recipients can receive “e-gift cards” which are simply a barcode or other electronic representation of the classic gift card concept. These types of electronic gift cards still suffer from the problems of not being very personal, having a high threshold acceptable amount, and so forth. Moreover, current gifting systems are not timely or social in nature. There is no way to give a gift to someone that is relevant at the time and place that person is located, other than the gift giver being physically present and buying the recipient something (e.g., paying for the recipient's drink or meal).